72 A STREET. MARIANAO

Tropicana Cuban cabaret, known as the Paradise under the stars, breaks with traditional schemes and is located outdoors in a wooded area. It was built in 1939 on the old land of the Villa Mina farm, in the Marianao area, Havana. In 1940 it adopted the current name when the choreographer and show director Sergio Orta suggested it, inspired by the melody of the composer and flutist Alfredo Brito, premiered there.

Initially an entrepreneur installed in that fabulous place a kind of night club restaurant for around 300 people, with gambling rooms, and turned it into one of the busiest casinos on the continent. It also kept the grove with the tropical environment: royal palms, mangoes, cedars and others. Tropicana’s performances have been acclaimed worldwide. Places as diverse as the Royal Albert Hall in London, Monte Carlo Sporting Club Monaco, Friedrichstadt Palace Berlin and Broadway Beacon Theater, New York. 

In 1954, the French designer Pierre Balmain presented the Summer collection on it. In the summer of 1996, the Japanese fashion designer Junko Koshino, presented her fashion show at the “Under the Stars Salon”. In 1992 the North American Academy of the Restaurant Industry gave the cabaret the Best of the Five Stars Diamond Award for the best cabaret in America. The great symbol of Tropicana is the sculpture of a dancer made by the Cuban artist Rita Longa in 1950 and, to a lesser extent, the Fountain of the Muses, by the Italian Aldo Gamba, installed since 1952 at the entrance of the mythical cabaret.